Letter from Geoffrey Precourt: What the ethnographers missed

Geoffrey Precourt

WARC U.S. editor Geoffrey Precourt discusses ethnographic research which, he observes, has risen in poularity in recent years.

Letter from Geoffrey Precourt: What the ethnographers missed

Geoffrey PrecourtWARC Online

On the eve of the inauguration, a survey landed with a gloom-and-doom message that seemed appropriate.The study, from an old-time Baltimore agency, claimed to portray the US as "a society weathering the early stages of a traumatic event…This is more than a financial crisis, it's a cultural crisis."It was run by a team of cultural/consumer anthropologists that "observes and interprets human behavior to uncover the reasons why people do what they do"-what's familiarly known as ethnographic research.Ethnography seems to be back in favor. But should...

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